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Tough times

B

burnt

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 28, 2008
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Location
Mid-western Ontario
Really tough times in the hog industry. This link is the story about a guy over by Hamilton, Ontario, who has lost so much money that he can't pay his electricity bill any more.

They finally cut it off. What can he do?

Their problem will have or has an impact on the price of beef since pork is so cheap.

The price of fats at the local sales barn this week was pathetic. Ex. - GOOD steers from a repeat, reputation feeder sold at $.72/cwt for 1450 weights.


http://www.am920.ca/news.php?area=details&cat_id=6&art_id=7054
 
That is so sad. :(

A hog barn without power is a dangerous place. Those ventilation fans are there for a reason. :shock:

Recession???? What a joke. It's called a Depression. We've been reliving the thirties for six years, and now the hog producers have joined us. What will it take to make anyone care? :???:
 
I recall visiting a hog producer in Manitoba almost two years ago. It was owned and operated by a religious organization, but don´t recall the name of the group.

Anyway, the fellow running this one barn was telling me about how much money they were due to lose per young hog. I can only imagine how much worse things are today.
 
Burnt - "Their problem will have or has an impact on the price of beef since pork is so cheap." I don't believe this to be true - pigs on the farm may be cheap but as FH states bacon in the store isn't. Don't be fooled that because the hog farmer is going broke the store will be full of pork at give away prices - it hasn't happened to beef so why would it to pork? The processor and retailer will not give away profit when they don't have to. Personally I think pork is really expensive at the store - for a lean, bland product that tastes of the filth it was reared in.

Kato - I would suggest that most pig producers are very familiar with periods of losses and don't have anything to learn from cattle producers in that respect. I remember an old guy in Scotland telling me he had been successful all his life farming because he avoided the "3 volatiles" - the 3 P's - Pigs, Potatoes and poultry. All of these things are far more cyclical than beef and regularly suffer extended periods of substantial losses.
 
I talked to another local beef producer the other day, we both lease fields on the same farm, I'm gaining what he down sizes. He's also a meat cutter for the grocery chain here. He sees what's happening to peoples wallets by their buying habits. The pork is dirt cheap and still not selling. It was his opinion that unfortunately the H1N1 being called "Swine Flu" has had a bad impact on pork sales.

I don't believe that connection, but I'm also part of the problem. I've probably bought $10 worth of pork in the last month or two. I think the pork industry has hit a secondary law of diminishing returns. They have maxed out their profits with efficiency gained by getting larger and through vertical integration. But there is a secondary factor they didn't take into account by getting that big, perception. How people view the production of the product.
 
Grassfarmer, I do not think that there will be a mass exodus of people switching from beef to pork because of price. And it is obviously true that lower farm-gate prices don't translate into lower retail prices.

However, when the commodity pork is as as cheap as it is for the processor, it is a beautiful opportunity for them to run more "feature" pricing that will move tonnes of product over the store shelf in a short time. For instance, cooked, ready to serve ham at $1.49/lb.

That kind of price differential makes it easy for the shopper to drop one of those into her cart rather than an uncooked beef roast at 2 -4 times the price.

And even getting 1 % of the consumers doing that switch does have a significant impact on the beef sales.

In my opinion, pork just doesn't have the taste or texture that it used to and we eat very little of it - bacon occasionally and ham maybe once a month. Can't stand a pork roast.

BenH I think your assessment of the efficiency factor in pork is bang on.
 
Kato said:
That is so sad. :(

A hog barn without power is a dangerous place. Those ventilation fans are there for a reason. :shock:

Recession???? What a joke. It's called a Depression. We've been reliving the thirties for six years, and now the hog producers have joined us. What will it take to make anyone care? :???:
Click to expand...

As long as there is food on the shelves, the majority of the people will not care. And if the food comes from Argentina or New Zealand, they will still not care.

Until Argentina gets hit with another round of FMD and then they will wonder why we don't grow our own food . . . .
 
burnt said:
Kato said:
That is so sad. :(

A hog barn without power is a dangerous place. Those ventilation fans are there for a reason. :shock:

Recession???? What a joke. It's called a Depression. We've been reliving the thirties for six years, and now the hog producers have joined us. What will it take to make anyone care? :???:
Click to expand...

As long as there is food on the shelves, the majority of the people will not care. And if the food comes from Argentina or New Zealand, they will still not care.

Until Argentina gets hit with another round of FMD and then they will wonder why we don't grow our own food . . . .
Click to expand...

It's not so much that they don't care - they don't know. Most consumers live in urban areas and are far removed from what happens on the farm. We need to reconnect with consumers and tell our story - I think they would be very supportive if they knew the circumstances most producers are in. I was delighted to read the AlbertaViews magazine this month as it's feature is beef production and has a series of articles about the history of beef production to the modern day crisis, outlining the role of the packer in our demise, quoting discussion from the legislature between an NDP politician grilling the Ag minister on why his government consistently backs the US packers against AB producers. The concluding page advises consumers what they can do to help the producer - eg avoiding product processed by the packer monopoly, buying locally or direct from producers etc. This is an outstanding magazine - I wish we could spend part of the ABP budget buying these and mailing this issue to every consumer in the province.
 
As far as my perception theory goes, what happens if you drive outisde the city. Chances are you can find a pasture somewhere with cows. People can see that and ignore the fact that they end up in a feed lot. With pork, you never see a pig in it's natural environment for the most part. Consumers have likely seen pictures of the confinement and have seen no other alternative.
 
Pork just doesn't taste like it used to. Pigs have gotten so efficient that they grow at an amazing speed, and really have no time to develop proper flavour. When I toss a pork chop from the store in the frying pan, unless I've put a good whack of garlic in it, I can smell pig. :? Not pork. Pig. So now I buy my chops from my neighbour at the farmer's market who raises pasture finished hogs. :P The difference is like night and day. They taste just like the ones we used to have when we raised our own hogs.

I can't honestly comment on store bought beef, since I've never bought a steak in the store. Isn't that amazing? According to my brothers and sisters, who have tasted both, the difference is the same as with the pigs. This is what the direct market is based on. I agree with grassfarmer that this market will become more and more significant as time goes by. Not everyone will go the direct route, but as time goes by, and one by one people get to taste the difference, the market will grow.

The momentum has begun, and it would be a terrible shame to miss out on these opportunities.
 
So in a way, the pork industry has caused its own demise by efficiently, mass producing a product that the consumer doesn't really like anymore.

This week we sold a side of beef to someone whose last order got used up a while ago. She was so happy to get her deep freeze restocked and said she was just buying a bit at a time at the store until she found a source direct from the farm. Her usual supplier did not have any ready right now and wouldn't have any for a few months.

She said that the store bought stuff had a strange smell and taste. What a shame. Imagine how much beef we could sell if the consumers had access to the kind of beef that we country folks are accustomed to eating.
 
My biggest hurdle is convenience for the consumer to purchase my product. I can sell all the sides I produce, but the beef I carry in inventory for sale by the individual packages is limited as far as what I can sell direct. This is mostly because I work an off farm job during the week and customers have to make arrangements to purchase. Saturday mornings I spend at the farmers market. At some point I would like to get a walk-in freezer and have a farm store where one wall of the freezer is the glass doors with shelves. I would probably start with the store having very limited hours. I would also love to get into pastured pork, possibly acorn finished, I hesitate taking on too much more while working an off farm job.
 
I've done quite a bit of reading on hog finishing farms on another site. Most of these are in the corn belt the farmer makes enough in ten years to pay off the building. Hogs and feed are furnished by the packer of choice. At the end of ten years they figure the building to be about used up as hogs are very hard on buildings and equipment. Most consider their wages as the manure that is theirs to use on cropland. Now the hog owners on some of these contracts are actually making the farmer feeder pay for the manure.It's a tough racket thats for sure but the hog industry been tough since I was a kid we quit 30 years ago some are just slower to admit defeat.Unless you get your hands on some very cheap feed it's next to impossible to make a profit with hogs on a small scale.
 
If this is confirmed it won't help the pork industry a bit--even tho the virus apparently cannot be spread by eating pork...

Breaking News
USDA further testing for possible H1N1 in Minn. swine

By Lisa M. Keefe on 10/16/2009


USDA announced late Friday that the agency is conducting "confirmatory" testing for the H1N1 virus on swine samples collected at the 2009 Minnesota State Fair between Aug. 26 and Sept. 1.

If the presence of H1N1 is confirmed in the pigs, it would be the first such case in swine in the United States. There have been a few H1N1 infections reported in swine outside the United States.

USDA said that at the time the samples were collected at the fair, the pigs were apparently healthy.

Although an outbreak of H1N1 influenza occurred in a group of children housed in a dormitory at the fair at the same time samples were collected from the pigs, USDA said that information available so far would suggest the children were not sickened by contact with the pigs.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said again in the USDA news release that the virus cannot be spread by eating pork.

In a statement released shortly after the USDA's announcement, the National Pork Producers' Council repeated the point, and said that "since the H1N1 flu was first reported in late April, NPPC and the National Pork Board have urged pork producers to tighten their existing biosecurity protocols to protect their pigs from the virus, including restricting public access to barns."
Click to expand...
 
The news story I read stated that the pigs caught the flu from the children. What people don't realize is that flu in pigs is very common. It happens all the time, and it really doesn't pose any risk to people who eat the pork. This flu is no different from any other in that way. The only difference is media attention. Gotta get that headline!
 
burnt said:
Grassfarmer, I do not think that there will be a mass exodus of people switching from beef to pork because of price. And it is obviously true that lower farm-gate prices don't translate into lower retail prices.

However, when the commodity pork is as as cheap as it is for the processor, it is a beautiful opportunity for them to run more "feature" pricing that will move tonnes of product over the store shelf in a short time. For instance, cooked, ready to serve ham at $1.49/lb.

That kind of price differential makes it easy for the shopper to drop one of those into her cart rather than an uncooked beef roast at 2 -4 times the price.

And even getting 1 % of the consumers doing that switch does have a significant impact on the beef sales.

In my opinion, pork just doesn't have the taste or texture that it used to and we eat very little of it - bacon occasionally and ham maybe once a month. Can't stand a pork roast.

BenH I think your assessment of the efficiency factor in pork is bang on.
Click to expand...




Burnt 2 factors in taste. Hogs have been bred way to lean. They are now trying to reverse this big mistake.

Taste and texture is also controlled by what hogs are eating. Then hogs are confined and developing no muscle. The meat is basically a mass of fibers with no structure.

We raise all of our hogs on pasture. No confinement facilities. There is a difference in pork raised the old way and the factory way.

Also your bacons and cured meats here is the gist of these products. The average bacon is cured and packaged in 12 hours from the time of killing and chilling. Also many packers have resorted to using tumblers to speed the introduction of cure into the finished product. This results in a product with no texture or basically a pile of mush.

Nothing is about quality any more its simply about the bottom line. Another example of this is Barbque. 30 years ago Barbque was slow cooked for hours. Your typical pork shoulder was slow cooked over live coals for an hour per pound of shoulder weight. A whole hog was slow cooked for 26 hours over live coals.

Today people accept Barbque as a sauce splashed on some meat with a liquid smoke added. Anyone who has had the real product will not accept the bottom line product of today.

Country hams used to age for a year before being sold and were dry cured. Today a country ham is pickled with a a brine and pumped full of fluids prior to marketing to stop any shrink. Clifty Farms Country hams are a pickled or brine cured ham.

Last the gassing of meats in vacuum packaging is also the cause of the inferior taste of the retail product. They gas the product to be able to extend the shelf life.
 
Ben H said:
My biggest hurdle is convenience for the consumer to purchase my product. I can sell all the sides I produce, but the beef I carry in inventory for sale by the individual packages is limited as far as what I can sell direct. This is mostly because I work an off farm job during the week and customers have to make arrangements to purchase. Saturday mornings I spend at the farmers market. At some point I would like to get a walk-in freezer and have a farm store where one wall of the freezer is the glass doors with shelves. I would probably start with the store having very limited hours. I would also love to get into pastured pork, possibly acorn finished, I hesitate taking on too much more while working an off farm job.
Click to expand...

Ben check with your USDA agent. Holding coolers and freezers qualify for goverment assistance just like grain bins. Low interest loans. :wink:
 

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